The Bailard Foundation: Celebrating Many Milestones

Last year we launched the Bailard Foundation, created to formalize Bailard’s decades-long history of giving back, with a core mission: to improve the communities in which we live, work, and engage. As we mark our first anniversary, we are happy to report the Bailard Foundation has made significant strides.

The Impact

The Bailard Foundation’s four key focus areas are affordable housing, financial literacy, homelessness & poverty, and international impact initiatives. At the close of the quarter – or just over a year since its founding – the Foundation made over $70,000 in grants to 25 value-aligned organizations, with 70% of those funds going directly to organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We are excited to highlight the work of our grantee organizations, including that of JobTrain, a Bay Area based nonprofit helping those who are most in need to succeed, and those helping address COVID-19 and racial inequality in America. To ease some of the painful impacts of COVID-19, the Foundation contributed to seven food banks in Northern California as well as World Central Kitchen. The Foundation also donated to several San Francisco Bay Area based organizations to help fight racial injustice, including Larkin Street Youth Services, Hope SF, and the San Francisco Bay Area chapters of 100 Black Men and 100 Black Women.

A Humble Recognition

We are also encouraged by the support the Bailard Foundation has received in the past year. Notably, over the most recent quarter, the Foundation was selected as a finalist for the WealthManagement.com 2020 Awards for Corporate Social Responsibility & Diversity. The finalists are chosen from a panel of fifteen independent judges, and this year there were more than 600 nominations submitted across the award’s categories. By being selected as a finalist, the Bailard Foundation has been recognized, along with seven other firms’ impactful initiatives, as an industry-leading example of an investment and wealth manager that is aware of the responsibility companies hold to support their broader communities. To view the full list of finalists across all categories, please visit here.*

Through its support of 25 organizations across the Bay Area and the world, and achieving this industry-wide recognition, the Bailard Foundation has established strong momentum as it enters its second year. In the next year, we hope to further expand the Foundation’s operational base to better serve the organizations it supports. We also aim to deepen relationships with the Foundation’s current grantees through organization-specific volunteer efforts when it is safe to do so amid the pandemic. With these goals in mind, we have put together an online presence for the Bailard Foundation where our clients, employees, and community can learn more about the Foundation’s mission and recent activities. We look forward to what the future holds for the Bailard Foundation and we encourage our employees, clients, and friends to follow along with this journey.

The Bailard Foundation has a board of directors that is led by chairwoman Terri Bailard, widow of firm co-founder Tom Bailard, and features both friends of Bailard, Inc. and employees.

* About the WealthManagement.com Industry Awards: Now in its sixth year, this program recognizes the outstanding companies, individuals and organizations that make a real difference in the daily activities of financial advisors. More than 200 companies submitted 625 nominations in 2020 — a testament to the value that firms place in the awards as a way to enhance their reputation, increase their brand recognition and set their organization apart from the competition. There was no cost for Bailard to submit a nomination. A panel of 15 judges made up of top names in the industry determines the WealthManagement.com 2020 Industry Awards Finalists. Bailard is one of eight finalists in the Corporate Social Responsibility & Diversity category. Winners will then be selected based on quantitative measures of their initiatives—such as scope, scale, adoption and feature set—along with qualitative measures such as innovation, creativity and new methods of delivery.